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Gold/Mining/Energy : Big Dog's Boom Boom Room -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (147788)	3/20/2011 2:15:08 PM
From: ChanceIs	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 206331

RE: Headway as Fukushima pumps restart That is certainly good news. I think that this nuclear tragedy is well on its way to fading into the back pages of the news. I saw on the Sunday talking heads, former New Mexico Gov Richardson stating that nuclear (at least in the US) isn't going anywhere. Richardson was Sec of Energy under Clinton. He knows the score. Also stated that China is about the business of building 20 new nukes, and that might get slowed a bit but not stopped. From my POV, I can see some expenses rise in current US nukes for additional defense in depth, but not by much. Here are some band aides which might be required/adapted: 1) Mobile diesel backups for water recirculation. It would be a snap to rig specialized diesels to include pump controls. Maybe we should just modify some military tanks or armored personnel carriers. The vehicle tracks (vice tires) will get you into the plant even it there had been a tsunami. You can just use a mechanical power take off from the main drive engine to turn the generator instead of a separate diesel. All of that armor is metal and good for stopping radiation. Could add/replace with lead. Maybe just modify this "Grizzly" Combat Mobility Vehicle. Note the backhoe arrangement folded on the top. Just keep four or five of these puppies dedicated to each nuke plant in garages about three miles away. Our military has stuff you and I never dreamed of. 2) Inert Gas Flooding. It would be a snap to rig the reactor shell buildings with a multitude of gas injection nozzles all piped to several access points on the outside of the shell. Pump a lot of CO2, nitrogen, Halons into the shell to displace the hydrogen and oxygen. No hydrogen, no explosions. No oxygen, no zirconium fires. This is not penetration of containment. The building shells are not intended as containment so making some piping penetrations is not a problem. 3) Do the same as #2 above but with water nozzles over the cooling ponds. 4) Spent Rod Storage: Get the spent rods (at least the ones aged more than 180 days) out of the reactor buildings. I came to understand the motivation of locating pools on top of the reactors. It is as I thought - shortest path from the actual core position to a cooling pond. The longer those "hot" puppies are in the air, the worse off you are. That could be attenuated by letting the reactor sit idle for 90 days or so - basically acting as a cooling pool at the beginning of a refueling cycle. That way you have semi-hot rods when actual refueling begins. Cost a lot to keep the reactor idle for sure - but less costly than the ultimate negative outcome we just experienced. 5) Administrative Planning: The Japanese were slow to react. They didn't have all of the info they needed, but even if they did, I suspect that they were not psychologically prepared. Its a little like not cutting losses on NFLX. This is where professional, independent risk managers (management consultants) can come into play - both before and during a crisis. 6) Instrumentation and Communications: One can always slap more and better sensors inside a plant. Then you can tie them into the Internet through fiber optic, copper wire, radio, etc. Defense in depth. There is no reason with today's technology that the CEO of say Exelon, sitting in his office in Chicago couldn't instantly bring up a screen with a graphic of all his reactors to show the cooling pool temperature in each. There is a surfeit of ways to make the current US reactors of the Fukushima design safer - if in fact they are dangerous today. The US reactors aren't going away. Slight incremental cost o operate, No big deal.